A Troubled Teenager at Odds With Life in the Bronx

A memorial outside the Gouverneur Morris Houses in the Bronx features a photo of 14-year-old Shaaliver Douse, who was shot by the police as he chased and shot at another teenager.Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

To those who did not know him, Shaaliver Douse was an example of everything that can go wrong in a young life.

Though only 14, Shaaliver already had two gun-related arrests on his record when he was confronted by police officers early on Aug. 4 as he chased and shot at another teenager in the Bronx. The officers said they ordered him to drop the gun. Instead, he fired again. An officer shot and killed him.

In the days that followed, Shaaliver came to embody the worst possibilities of urban teenage life: a repeat offender caught up in a vicious rivalry with other gang members, one that erupted into violence at a time when most boys his age are home, safely asleep.

His death did not elicit expressions of outrage by elected officials. There were no mass rallies against police brutality, either. Shaaliver’s memorial service at a church in Harlem last week was largely unnoticed by the news media.

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The authorities at the scene of 151st Street and Courtlandt Avenue after the shooting.Credit
Michael Kamber for The New York Times

How a young boy grew into a teenager so enmeshed in violence remains a question that many who knew him are still struggling to answer. After being released pending trial on a gun charge in October, Shaaliver was arrested again in May on charges of attempted murder, suspected of shooting at a teenager from a rival gang, wounding him; the case was dropped after the victim stopped cooperating.

“He said he had the gun for protection,” said Victor Schurr, the defense lawyer representing Shaaliver in the October gun case. “He didn’t give me the impression he was a troublemaker. He said there were some other people in the community, and he was in danger of being hurt.”

Kevin O’Connor, an assistant commissioner at the New York Police Department who follows gang violence, said he had never seen “a kid with three gun scenarios in nine months in my 25 years of dealing with youth.”

He added: “Somewhere, somehow, something didn’t work.”

In bits and pieces, a complex and troubling picture of Shaaliver has emerged from dozens of interviews with his family, friends and neighbors over the past two weeks. By their accounts, Shaaliver was not a hardened criminal but an impressionable teenager. Like many others, he was trying to find his place in a Bronx neighborhood scarred by poverty, drugs and crime, where guns were easy to come by and settling scores could become a way of life. He was surrounded by family and friends who tried to protect him, yet in the end he chose or was lured into the wrong crowd.

“Despite what’s being said about him, this kid had something going for him,” said Abraham Jones, the executive director of Claremont Neighborhood Centers, where Shaaliver had a part-time summer job sweeping floors and emptying trash. “It’s really very sad. At heart, he was a good boy struggling to exist and confronted with so many competing options.”

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A recent basketball game in the neighborhood.Credit
Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times

The shooting appeared to be within Police Department guidelines, although the department is still investigating.

The turning point in Shaaliver’s life came, it seemed, in the last year, the period in which he had all his criminal encounters.

He drifted toward a group of older teenagers associated with the MacBallers, a group affiliated with the Bloods gang who toted guns and fought with rival groups. “The common denominator, the common theme, is where are you from,” said Lt. Keith Loughran of the police’s Bronx gang squad. “It makes it challenging for the kids, as they grow up in areas that have the crew problem.” The squad has increasingly focused on the groups, known as crews, that are often made up of teenagers.

Last week, after attending Shaaliver’s memorial service, three young men belonging to the MacBallers ran into a member of a rival crew, the Sheridan Avenue Gunners, and brutally beat him with metal pipes, sticks and a milk crate, the authorities said. The victim was hospitalized in critical condition, and the three men were charged with attempted murder.

Shaaliver, known as Shaalie to his friends, grew up in the Gouverneur Morris Houses, a sprawling public housing project that runs along Washington Avenue in the Bronx. He was the only child of Shanise Farrar, 40, who had worked as a security officer at the Salvation Army. His father, Oliver Douce, did not live with them but came to visit.

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A boy signed Shaaliver’s shoe.Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

His family and many of his friends, angered by what has been reported about Shaaliver, have been unwilling for the most part to share many personal details of his life.

But shortly before his death, Shaaliver had confided to a close friend that he wanted to go to college and to get serious about boxing, because that could lead to a career and a future. “He wanted to get out of the projects,” said the friend, Aileen Nunez, 19. “He wanted to move on with his life.”

Shaaliver attended a Head Start program at a neighborhood church, and an elementary school, Public School 55, across the street from his building. He went for a few years to P. S. 186, a school for students with special needs. One educator there said that Shaaliver usually followed directions and did not get into fights, and that his mother was an involved parent. Last fall, he entered the ninth grade at Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School. Ms. Farrar said his favorite subjects were history and math, and that he made the honor roll.

At home, he loved eating pancakes and waffles with syrup, and could belt out the lyrics to “Bad Boys” when he was young, his relatives said. He played basketball and video games. Neighbors remembered him as polite and respectful.

In fact, he was the one who sometimes was bullied by bigger boys, his friends and neighbors said. “He was quiet,” recalled Ernest Nesby, 24, a maintenance worker who considered Shaaliver a little brother. “He would get picked on a lot because he was so small.”

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“They’re protecting their block. They figure this is their block, this is what they’ve got.” WADE PULLMAN, on youth violence in the areaCredit
Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times

That changed as Shaaliver grew tall and handsome and started hanging out with older teenagers. He dressed nicely and liked designer sneakers. He talked about saving up for a pair of Air Jordan 1 sneakers, which sell for over $100.

Simone Crawley, 18, a friend, said that if her outfit did not match, she could count on Shaaliver to tell her. If she was arguing with her girlfriends, he would step in. “He’d say ‘Don’t do that, stick together,’ ” she said. “He was the one who let you know what was right or wrong.”

For the past year, Shaaliver had dated Brianna Sosa, who was two years older and lived three floors above him. They liked watching movies together; their favorite was “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” “He was really young, but he was really mature,” she said.

But to others, Shaaliver seemed cool and edgy. On Facebook, his friends called him Shaalie Blood. At night and on weekends, he could be found on Washington Avenue near East 169th street, which is a hub for teenagers, who call it the Nine. All around, large, often rowdy groups talk tough, smash bottles and chase one another over fences and through traffic in a game they call Manhunt.

“They stand on the corner, they drink, they get high and they get in trouble,” said Maria Jobe, a home health aide who lives in Shaaliver’s building, adding that she did not allow her own teenage children to stay out past 8 p.m. “I worry about their safety. I wish I had more money to move out of this area and give my kids a better chance.”

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“I have no reason to be out at night because all there is is trouble,” said MARIA JOBE, a home health aide who lives in the Gouverneur Morris HousesCredit
Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times

The corridor has attracted the attention of the police as an epicenter of tit-for-tat violence among the crews. Many teenagers said they were often referred to as “Washington” by outsiders, and targeted just for living there. “Different blocks hate this block so we’ll go to them and we’ll fight,” said Sean Lewis, 16, who knew Shaaliver.

Shaaliver’s friends had been fighting in recent months with another group of teenagers who lived around Lyman Place, about eight blocks away from the Washington Avenue project. Last week, near Shaaliver’s building, there was black graffiti written against Lyman Place on the sidewalk.

Shaaliver’s half-brother, Troy Alston, said he tried to warn Shaaliver that no good would come from hanging around with a crowd because it could make him a target for a rival group, or the police.

The night that Shaaliver was killed, his father was going to cook him dinner but never came, Ms. Farrar said. So she fixed him Italian sausages with onions and peppers on a roll. A neighbor brought over a plate of homemade macaroni and cheese because she knew he liked it. After he finished, he left their apartment and texted his girlfriend that he was close by.

Sometime after that, he went to Courtlandt Avenue, where, his friends said, he had been invited to a party by some girls he knew.

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A gun recovered after the shooting on Aug. 4.Credit
New York City Police Department

Surveillance video showed Shaaliver walking on Courtlandt with two men. One of them, a man in his 20s, was known to be an associate of the MacBallers, according to a police official. He was shirtless and appeared in the video to be yelling to himself and waving his arms; the other man has not been identified.

“None of these kids do anything by themselves,” the official said. Ms. Farrar said she never saw Shaaliver with a gun, and it is not clear where he got it.

After his death, Shaaliver’s friends and neighbors packed his memorial service and lighted hundreds of candles at a memorial outside his building.

They scrawled messages of love and regret on a piece of cardboard and decorated a pair of his sneakers with “R.I.P. Shaalie.”

Those who knew him insisted there had to be a reason for what had happened.

“He dressed well, always had the most expensive shoes on,” said Sabuwh Muhammad, 31, a close family friend. “He really didn’t need for nothing. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, he’s not a kid that went around having to rob people or sell drugs.”